Working from home can be a great way to avoid a daily commute and achieve a better work-life balance. However, you’ll need to ensure that you can maintain – or exceed – your usual productivity levels if you want to work from home permanently. To find out how take a look at these top tips to boost productivity when you’re working from home:
1. Create a Quiet Workspace
Turning a spare room into a home office is, perhaps, the best way to ensure you’ve got a quiet and productive place to work. However, if you don’t have a whole room you can designate as your office, try to create a permanent workspace in a shared room, such as a dining room. By keeping the door closed or installing a room divider, you can separate work and home life and keep distractions to a minimum.
2. Keep Pets Entertained
If you have pets, there’s no doubt they’ll love having you at home more, but they can have a major impact on your productivity, if you let them. If your cat wants to snooze on your laptop or you can’t resist giving in when your dog brings you a ball, you’ll need to enforce some ground rules so that you can work from home effectively.
If possible, keep pets out of your workspace so that they can’t distract you and use automated feeders to ensure they’ve got what they need. In addition, boredom-busting toys, like interactive treat dispensers, can be a great way to keep your pets entertained. For more inspiration, take a look at this How to Keep Cats Entertained While You’re Working Site and get ready to maximize your productivity.
3. Get IT Support
When you’re working from home, you’re responsible for ensuring you can connect to remote working platforms, take part in virtual meetings, and undertake your work effectively. Of course, a dropped broadband connection or a malfunctioning computer is going to prevent you from doing so. If you’re wasting precious minutes every day trying to resolve IT issues, then your productivity is going to take a hit.
By getting dedicated IT support, however, you can ensure that you’re always able to work efficiently. If your employer doesn’t provide IT assistance, consider signing up for remote managed IT services. This can be a budget-friendly way of protecting your systems and maximizing their functionality.
Is Working from Home Right for You?
Many people love working from home, but this doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right option for everyone. If you struggle to concentrate on work when you’re in your home environment or you miss the social aspect of working alongside your colleagues, returning to the office might be preferable.
However, if you enjoy the added independence that remote working offers, you can keep distractions to a minimum. And if you have the space to set up a dedicated office, working from home could be a fantastic way to create a work-life balance and achieve professional success.